Three-Body Episode 4 Recap
> Three-Body Recap
Restless and sleepless for two days, Wang Miao is tormented by a countdown only he can see. He dismisses a colleague's suggestion to see a psychiatrist, reflecting on a recent Frontiers of Science gathering. He now understands why scientists, when faced with phenomena that defy explanation, instinctively turn to the "farmer" and "shooter" hypotheses—true comprehension, he believes, only comes from direct experience.
Driven by this, he heads to his lab late at night, as news reports detail a series of mysterious lab explosions and scientist deaths. Wang Miao awakens in his lab, where his assistant, Yu Zheng, praises his innovative work on the Flying Blade nanomaterial, though it still cannot be mass-produced. The assistant reports that the reaction chamber is malfunctioning and requires a shutdown for maintenance, which Wang Miao had previously resisted.
Now confronted by his own inexplicable visions, Wang Miao agrees to halt the experiment immediately. As the process stops, the countdown in his vision vanishes. Enraged to see the countdown still on his computer, he smashes the monitor and furiously calls Shen Yufei, demanding to know the countdown's purpose. He argues that his applied physics research is not significant enough to warrant such attention and challenges her "shooters and farmers" to demonstrate power beyond human tricks like holograms.
Shen Yufei calmly replies that the worthiness of attention is not for them to decide, stating her intent is to help him avoid Yang Dong's fate. Accepting his challenge, she sends him a website containing Morse code and tells him that if he restarts his research in three days, the countdown will resume.
She instructs him to find a location to observe the cosmic microwave background on the 14th, promising that from 1 to 5 AM, the entire universe will "flicker" for him. Wang Miao is sitting dejectedly in his office when Shi Qiang arrives, revealing he knows about the countdown. Wang Miao lies, claiming it's a benign eye condition called Muscae volitantes. Shi Qiang offers a clue to encourage cooperation: Yang Dong also halted her experiment right before her suicide.
He points out a disturbing pattern—all the scientists who took their own lives had been in contact with Shen Yufei, and now she is in contact with Wang Miao. He urges Wang Miao to accept his protection, but Wang Miao vehemently refuses, arguing that Shi Qiang has no proof and would be powerless to stop Shen Yufei if she truly intended to harm him. Wang Miao visits Ye Wenjie at her home.
Observing his troubled state, Ye advises him not to dwell on his worries, sharing that her daughter Yang Dong was never suited for marriage or motherhood, as they belonged to a different world from her own. In Yang Dong's room, Ye shows Wang Miao a photo of them in front of an old antenna and a birch-bark notebook with Yang Dong's childhood drawings.
She explains that Yang Dong had a unique mind, finding complex formulas "beautiful" and interpreting Bach's music as a giant building an intricate house. Wang Miao tries to reassure her, but Ye insists her upbringing was a failure. Yang Dong's world, she laments, was built solely on "pure ethereal theories"; when those theories collapsed with the idea that "Physics doesn't exist," she had nothing left to live for.
Before he leaves, Wang Miao asks where he can observe the cosmic microwave background. Ye suggests two observatories and offers to contact her student, Sha Ruishan, who works at the one in the Beijing suburbs. Noting Wang Miao's pale complexion, she gives him some ginseng for his health. Shi Qiang is waiting outside Ye Wenjie's home. He tells Wang Miao he finds Ye Wenjie’s calm demeanor unsettling for a grieving mother.
Unable to find a taxi, Wang Miao reluctantly accepts a ride. During the drive, Shi Qiang reveals a critical discovery: nine more scientists, an entire astronomical observation team in Helsinki, recently committed suicide after observing solar anomalies and trying to publicize them. He then returns to Yang Dong, explaining that while there was no overt connection to Shen Yufei, he found surveillance footage of Shen giving Yang Dong a file folder in a cafe eight months prior.
The meeting occurred just five days before Yang Dong’s suicide, and the folder was never found among her belongings. Later at home, a visibly trembling Wang Miao accidentally drops and shatters a glass, startling his daughter, Doudou. She reminds him of a school lecture on Friday and asks him to attend, which he promises to try to do. He reflects on the "Frontiers of Science" discussions, musing that fear stems from ignorance.
When Doudou asks if Yang Dong was afraid, Wang Miao explains that her world consisted solely of physics, making the notion that "Physics doesn't exist" the most terrifying prospect imaginable for her.
